How Do I know my RS232 Card is Working in my PocketPC PDA?
The PocketPC operating system is very peculiar in the way it handles Compact Flash (CF) and PCMCIA cards. It is also very limited in it's connection applications for serial port cards like the CF232/CF232-5 etc. On most implementations, there is no generic serial communications application like "HyperTerminal" to use to check if your new serial card is installed correctly. So how can you tell whether your nice shiny new CF232 card is working in your PDA?
The Card Detection Dilemma - has it been detected?
When any Compact Flash of PCMCIA card is inserted under Windows Pocket PC or Windows CE there is no confirmation of any kind. For most users , this is a worry; We have become accustomed to all kinds of beeps and popup messages when new hardware is detected in other Windows Operating systems, so it is disturbing not to have any message to confirm that the card is working.
Actually you only need to start worrying when you insert the card and get something like the following screen shot :
In this case I've inserted a network card and that has not been recognised, but if you get a message like this with a CF232 card, you have problems. The CF232 card is recognised by all flavors of PocketPC and Windows CE as a standard serial port, and it uses the standard serial port driver supplied with the operating system, no other drivers are required.
So, you've inserted the card, but nothing happens....how can you demonstrate that it is working? Well, if you follow these screen shots, you can at least confirm that the card is being recognised by the operating system.
In the "Settings" start menu option, select "Connections" like this
:
Click on the "Modem" connection (The card is not a modem, but PocketPC doesn't know that, and you can actually connect an external modem to the CF232 card and this works.)
Click "New Connection..." and the following screen shot will appear...
You can see that in this case the "Elan-Serial_Port:_CF232-5" card has been successfully detected by the OS.
If you have an external modem connected to the CF232 card, then you can continue by clicking "Next" etc and follow the on screen menus to set up a dial up connection to your ISP, but we'll stop here as that part should be self explanatory. If you do this, then you'll know it's working for sure.
There's not much more you can do now except run the application you bought the card for. If you need a terminal application you can find these on the Internet for download. We don't recommend any one in particular, but a quick search on Google turned up several including one nice looking Terminal/Telnet application for PocketPC etc. at http://www.cam.com/vxhpc.html.
Don't forget you will need an appropriate cable for the connection. If you're trying to connect your PDA to a PC, then you'll need a serial crossover cable (sometimes called a "Null Modem" cable).
Our driver-utility for Pocket PC is not necessary to make the card work but will make your PDA give a 'happy beep' when the card is inserted and another beep when the card is removed.
To download the driver please fill in the driver download registration form.
COM Port Allocation
Once the above driver is installed, an icon appears in the "Programs" list called "elComID"; If you run this program, it will tell you which COM port has been allocated to the CF232
